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Friday, August 11, 2017

Falsehoods and Facts about the Middle East Forum: A Top Ten List

Unsurprisingly, the Middle East Forum (MEF)
has been the recipient of Fake News lies all based on the Multiculturalist
accusation of Islamophobia. Evidently the lies have become so huge that the MEF
has decided to answer those lies with a Top Ten List.

Below is an email alert introduction to that Top Ten List
which I will follow with cross post of that list.

As the Middle East Forum’s reach and influence expands, so too does the flurry
of ad hominem, distorted, and plainly false attacks on the organization,
mostly from Islamists and the far Left.

Institutions leading this assault include the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Council
on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), J Street, Jewish Voices for Peace, and
most recently the Silicon Valley Community Foundation. George Soros’ Open Society Foundations has a
special place in our hearts for funding anti-MEF research.

Our opponents attack us for different reasons. Islamist activists loathe our
national security views, advancement of women’s rights, and efforts to protect
freedoms of moderate Muslim authors, activists, and publishers. Israel-haters
oppose our efforts to puncture Palestinian illusions. Academics want to
discredit our efforts to improve Middle East studies in North America.
America-haters can pretty much take their pick of reasons.

Regardless of their motives, they all draw on the same tired canards that we so
often refuted on an ad hoc basis. To save the curious some legwork, we are
publishing a list of the top ten falsehoods,
refuting them all at once, and maybe once and for all. Please take a look.

The Middle East Forum (MEF) is the object of repeated
falsehoods. To clear the record, here follows the top ten and our corrections.

Falsehood 1: The Middle East Forum is anti-Muslim, or
"Islamophobic."

False Statements

Center for American Progress:
"The Middle East Forum is at the center of the Islamophobia
network."

Council on American-Islamic
Relations (CAIR): Daniel Pipes is "considered by many Muslims to
be America's leading Islamophobe."

The Southern Poverty Law Center:
Daniel Pipes is "at the center of what is a large and evolving network of
Islam-bashing activists."

Fact 1: Far from being biased against Muslims,
MEF challenges a radical ideology responsible for unfathomable Muslim suffering,
and one which most Muslims reject. Middle East Forum President Daniel
Pipes has been emphasizing the
distinction between Islamism and the Islamic religion – and between the "completely
justified fear of Islamists and unjustified fear of all Muslims" – for
decades.

The only people who maintain there is little or no
distinction between detesting Islamism and detesting Muslims are Islamists
themselves and fellow travelers of the sort quoted above. The
"Islamophobia" accusations they level at MEF and others are designed
to conflate Islamism and Islam, claiming an attack on one is an attack on the
other.

This conflation also attempts to delegitimize non-Islamist
Muslims working to free their faith from the grip of extremists, and it is no
coincidence that Muslim reformers are often viciously attacked. The Southern
Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a far-left organization known for its often
inaccurate claims, lists Maajid Nawaz of the Quilliam Foundation alongside Mr.
Pipes as an "anti-Muslim extremist."

A lot of money finances these allegations. The Center for
American Progress, for example, received a $200,000 grant from George Soros'
Open Society Foundations (OSF) to "research and track the activities"
of the Middle East Forum and other NGOs working to combat the spread of radical
Islam in America. The Brookings Institution's recent focus on so-called
"Islamophobia" in America likely has much to do with its decade-long
partnership with Qatar, which provided it with a $14.8 million 4-year grant in
2013.

The latest organization to level the
"Islamophobia" accusation at MEF is the Silicon Valley Community
Foundation (SVCF), which lashed out after we
revealed publicly that it had provided $330,524 to two extremist organizations,
the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and Islamic Relief. It turns
out SVCF is getting paid too. According to its 990 form, the extremist International Institute of Islamic Thought
(IIIT) provided SVCF with $500,000 in "program
assistance" in 2015.

Falsehood 2: Daniel Pipes regards Muslim organizations as
subversive.

False Statements

Jewish Voice for Peace: "Pipes
views almost every possible Muslim activity as subversive and
threatening."

Center for American Progress: "The
alarmist rhetoric of Daniel Pipes ... brand[s] Muslims, Sharia, and even the
instruction of Arabic as affronts to American freedom.

Fact 2: In keeping with Mr. Pipes' oft-repeated
belief that "radical Islam is the problem, moderate Islam is the
solution," MEF's Islamist Watch project was established with a mission to
"expose the Islamist organizations that currently dominate the debate,
while identifying and promoting the work of moderate Muslims."

MEF has a long history of supporting, employing, and
collaborating with Muslims working to free their community and faith from the
grip of Islamists.

See a list here of Muslim
organizations the Forum regards as vital allies in this fight, some of whom it
helps fund.

Falsehood 3: Pipes supports interning Muslims, akin to
the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II.

False Statements

Jewish Voice for Peace:
"The Southern Poverty Law Center notes that 'Pipes endorsed the internment
of Muslims in America,' referencing WWII Japanese American concentration camps
as a model to be used against Muslims today."

Silicon Valley Community
Foundation: "Daniel Pipes, president of Middle East Forum, has written
in support of the model of Japanese internment camps in relation to American
Muslims."

Fact 3: This canard is a paradigmatic example of
how charges initially levelled by one radical organization metastasize through
repetition by others. The SPLC report misquoted at right by
Jewish Voice for Peace actually states, "In 2004, Pipes endorsed the
internment of ethnic Japanese in American prison camps in World War II and held
that up as a model for dealing with Muslims today."

But even this isn't true. In 2005 an Islamist organization
in Canada had to apologize and make a
charitable donation to the Middle East Forum for making this claim.

The original article did not
argue for internment camps as a model (a follow-up explaining how CAIR and
others distorted Pipes' position can be read here), but rather concluded
with support for author Michelle Malkin's thesis about threat profiling:
"She correctly concludes that, especially in time of war, governments
should take into account nationality, ethnicity, and religious affiliation in
their homeland security policies."

· CAIR itself implicitly acknowledged the truth when
it settled a 2004 libel
lawsuit against a group making this allegation called Anti-CAIR, with no
apology, retraction, or removal of offending Internet materials.

Jewish Voice for Peace:
"Contrary to the Middle East Forum's smear campaign, CAIR is a
nationally-recognized civil rights organization that has received praise from
seventeen U.S. Senators and 85 U.S. Representatives from both sides of the
political aisle."

Fact 5: CAIR and Islamic Relief are focused on
promoting social insularity and distrust of authorities among U.S. Muslims, not
defending their civil rights. In fact, both groups frequently host and promote
extremist speakers who advocate against civil rights as most Americans
understand them.

Siraj Wahhaj, for example,
preaches that homosexuality is a "disease" of society, that the
punishment for adultery is death, and that Muslims shouldn't have non-Muslim
friends. Omar Suleiman has rationalized honor
killings, telling women thinking of promiscuity that they could be killed by
their fathers for "offending Allah." Jamal Badawi has said that
men have a right to beat their wives. Abdul Nasir Jangda has argued
that they have the right to rape their wives.

Falsehood 6: CAIR and Islamic Relief have clean bills of
health on links to terrorism from the federal government and from charity
watchdogs.

False Statements

Silicon Valley Community
Foundation: "The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and
Islamic Relief ... are nonprofit organizations in good standing with federal
agencies, and do not appear on any U.S. government list as having been tied to
terrorism."

Silicon Valley Community Foundation:
“GuideStar reports ... whether a nonprofit organization is identified as a
'Specially Designated National' on the Office of Foreign Asset Control's list.
In simpler terms, this is the list of U.S. organizations designated as having
links to terrorist organizations. Neither CAIR nor Islamic Relief is on this
list."

Fact 7: MEF is a research institution that
promotes American interests. Islamist Watch presents factual research on the
influence and activity of non-violent U.S.-based Islamist groups and their
leaders. Some oppose Israel, to be sure, but most are more focused on targeting
women, homosexuals, and others.

Campus Watch researches, analyzes, and critiques the
academic study of the Middle East. It argues
against "analytical failures, the mixing of politics with
scholarship, intolerance of alternative views, apologetics, and the abuse of
power over students," but it accepts divergent perspectives. Campus
Watch recently published a favorable review of a lecture at the City University
of New York (CUNY) by Sari Nusseibeh, a former senior PLO representative under
Yasser Arafat whose views hardly qualify as pro-Israeli. A cursory examination
of the project's research articles demonstrates that the
characterization of Campus Watch as Israel-centered is false. As for the
"dossiers," CW took down those initial eight profiles 15
years ago in favor of an institution-focused survey method.

Falsehood 8: Daniel Pipes and the Middle East Forum have
funded the political campaigns of Dutch right-wing leader Geert Wilders.

False Statements

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: "David
Horowitz and Daniel Pipes are reported to have put some $150,000 of foundation
money into his campaign."

Fact 8: Not a penny from Daniel Pipes or the
Middle East Forum has gone to Wilders personally, his political party, or his
campaign.

MEF did provide a grant to pay legal bills in Mr. Wilders'
trial over his film on radical Islam.

As the New York Timesnotes: "the funds that
were sent to Geert Wilders were to help him in his legal cases and were not
political donations."

Falsehood 9: Campus Watch seeks to stifle academic
freedom.

False Statements

CAIR: Campus Watch [is] part
of a larger anti-intellectual campaign aimed at regulating discourse on the
Middle East.

Chronicle of Higher Education,
Inside Higher Ed, The Nation: Campus Watch is "neo-McCarthyite"
and part of the "New McCarthyism" that seeks to silence anyone with
whom it disagrees.

Fact 9: Campus Watch critiques contemporary
Middle East studies, which years ago jettisoned rigorous scholarship and
teaching for politicized, biased, and inferior work. There is nothing wrong
with scrutinizing and criticizing academic research.

No cliché is more hackneyed, no charge intellectually lazier
than that CW engages in "McCarthyism" (see right). Unlike the late
Sen. Joseph McCarthy, Campus Watch—a private organization—neither possesses nor
seeks the ability to silence or persecute anyone.

Only in the fevered imaginations of some professors do
rigorous critiques by outsiders equate with an anti-Communist witch-hunt.

Falsehood 10: Daniel Pipes has lost the support of his
former academic colleagues

False Statements

Al Jazeera [interviewing a
spokesman from the Center for American Progress]: Pipes has a
"scholarly background, but ... he has lost the support of many of the
people he used to work with, and associate with, when he was a well-respected
scholar."

Fact 10: Mr. Pipes never stopped being a
"well-respected scholar" When President George W. Bush nominated him
to the board of directors of the U.S. Institute of Peace in 2003, 30
academics signed a letter in support
of the appointment. For a more recent example, Professor Edward Alexander of the
University of Washington lavished praise in 2016 on Pipes' Nothing
Abides.

That said, it is true that a radicalized academia condemns
Pipes and the Forum for their mainstream outlook – and especially for their
role in exposing the failure of Middle East studies.

With roots going back to 1990, the Middle East Forum has
been an independent tax-exempt 501(c) (3) nonprofit organization based in Philadelphia
since 1994.

Mission

The Middle East Forum promotes American interests in the
Middle East and protects Western values from Middle Eastern threats.

The Forum sees the region — with its profusion of
dictatorships, radical ideologies, existential conflicts, border disagreements,
corruption, political violence, and weapons of mass destruction — as a major
source of problems for the United States. Accordingly, we urge bold measures to
protect Americans and their allies.

In the Middle East, we focus on ways to defeat radical
Islam; work for Palestinian acceptance of Israel; develop strategies to contain
Iran; and deal with the great advances of anarchy.

At home, the Forum emphasizes the danger of lawful
Islamism; protects the freedoms of anti-Islamist authors, activists, and
publishers; and works to improve Middle East studies.

Methods

The Middle East Forum realizes its goals through three main
mechanisms:

1)Intellectual:
The Forum provides context, insights, and policy recommendations through
the Middle East Quarterly, staff writings, public lectures, radio
and television appearances, and conference calls (see below for details).

Middle East Quarterly, published since 1994 and edited by
Efraim Karsh, it is the only scholarly journal on the Middle East consistent
with mainstream American views. Delivering timely analyses, cutting-edge
information, and sound policy initiatives, it serves as a valuable resource for
policymakers and opinion-shapers.

Public Outreach. Television and radio rely on Forum
specialists, who appear on virtually all the major American over-the-air and
cable news programs, plus stations around the globe. MEF staff also brief
ranking officials of the U.S. government, testify before Congress, and conduct
studies for executive branch agencies.